John Kasich Really Wants to Win New Hampshire

In the waning moments before today’s New Hampshire primary, Gov. John Kasich of Ohio — who has bet his entire presidential aspirations on a strong showing in the Granite State — sounded like a man in the swoon of a spiritual conversion. “I’ve found great clarity here in New Hampshire,” he said into a hand-held microphone, the emotion swelling in his briny voice as he paced slowly across the cafeteria floor of Concord High School, surrounded by a hushed audience of 500.

He spoke of voters he had met, their acute interrogatories and the stories they had shared with him. He felt their loneliness, their waywardness as the world spun frantically out of their control. He said that he could relate — that after considering their anxieties, “I’m going to try to slow my own life down.” To these hundreds of strangers, Kasich confided, “I finally figured it out in New Hampshire.”

This was Kasich’s 102nd town-hall-style meeting in the state. Among the Republican suitors, he led the field in personal appearances here. But Kasich was not the only candidate counting on a breakthrough performance. Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey boasted of having spent the most days in the state — 73 before the primary — while Gov. Jeb Bush’s campaign pointed out that it had personally contacted more voters than any other Republican contender. Having each performed dismally in the Iowa caucuses a week earlier (Bush finished sixth, Kasich eighth and Christie 10th), the three governors are seeking a reset in a state that is more ideologically broad-minded than Iowa but also more inclined to play hard-to-get.

Those who have managed to win the wary hearts of New Hampshire voters, as John McCain did in 2000, later speak of the experience in unabashedly romantic terms. The problem is that New Hampshire, like a romantic relationship, can be awfully hard to figure out. Andrew Smith of the University of New Hampshire’s Survey Center, possibly the state’s best pollster, predicted that the pre-primary polls will be even more flawed than those conducted just before the Iowa caucuses, which were uniformly wrong. “Historically, the New Hampshire polls are less accurate than the Iowa polls because of the high turnout and high percentage of those who make up their minds very late,” Smith told me. “This time around, our polls show that the day before the election, only 45 percent of Republicans have decided who they’re going to vote for.”

Smith added that the exceptionally crowded field, along with the $200 million in ads dumped into the state, made prognostication even more foolhardy than usual. After Donald J. Trump, he said, it was nearly impossible to say who would come in second — or third, fourth or fifth.

The New Hampshire gamble is a safer one for Bush, who has nearly $8 million in cash on hand, along with a well-endowed “super PAC” and extensive connections in crucial primary states like South Carolina and Florida. For Kasich (with a mere $2.5 million on hand) and Christie ($1.1 million), counting on the Granite State as a rainmaker is historically ill-advised. Though a number of past presidential nominees have gained momentum from a strong showing in New Hampshire — among them, Ronald Reagan in 1980, George Bush in 1988, McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012 — all had a national organization far superior to those of Kasich and Christie.

The only conceivable template would be the 1976 campaign of Gov. Jimmy Carter of Georgia, who came out of nowhere to win the fledging Iowa caucuses, upset a solid field of well-known candidates in New Hampshire and then become a juggernaut. But that was before the political world truly appreciated early-primary momentum. Since then, says James Campbell, a professor of political science at the University at Buffalo, “There hasn’t been a lot of history to suggest that throwing everything into New Hampshire is a successful strategy.” He added, “On the other hand, if you’re John Kasich or Chris Christie and you don’t have many resources to begin with, it’s not an unreasonable thing to do.”

It has long been conventional wisdom that libertarian-leaning New Hampshire offers a kind of corrective to the more socially conservative Iowa, steering the Republican field back toward the center. Apparently, the Iowa winner, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, believes this to be the case: Absent from his recent monologues in the Granite State are the many scriptural references that he used to appeal to evangelical voters in his well-memorized stump speech in Iowa. Both Kasich and Christie — who hail from blue states and therefore have records that reflect bipartisan compromise — are also banking on a significantly more moderate electorate.

It remains the case, however, that in the final days before the primary, the audiences showing up for Trump’s events have dwarfed those for the more mainstream candidates. The New York billionaire could win with a mere 25 percent of the vote in New Hampshire and still leave a muddled field behind him. As Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia professor of political science, says: “This could be the first New Hampshire primary where as many as five candidates get more than 10 percent of the vote. Then the four behind Trump will all try to make the best of their double-digit showing.”

The latest polls from New Hampshire show Kasich variously in second, third and fourth place. His single-minded path to victory — or near-victory — would seem to befit the eccentric temperament of Granite Staters. More than any other candidate, he has refrained from attacking his opponents. He has maintained an almost neurotically optimistic persona, urging voters to join an electoral cause “bigger than ourselves.” His appetite for horrific puns, outdated rock bands and flameproof polyester garb has been as steadfast as his belief, as yet untested, that Americans still yearn for unity and resolution. Unlike nearly all of his opponents, Kasich has yet to achieve a bounce in public standing from some memorable debate quip. He has instead plodded from firehouse to gymnasium to coffee shop, achieving personal clarity along the way while hoping for the only bounce that counts.

Kasich is not by nature an early riser. But when I spoke with him by phone earlier today, he said he woke up at 5:30 a.m. beside his wife, who informed him that he had just won the early-bird vote of Dixville Notch, N.H. “I can’t remember a campaign where I’ve been so calm and so happy,” he said. At midnight tonight, a charter plane will be awaiting Kasich and his team — not the cramped seven-seater he has been using throughout the last several months, but one that can accommodate 40 passengers. If the results in New Hampshire are as Kasich’s team anticipates, they will board that plane and fly to South Carolina, the next primary state. In that case, Kasich said, he will apply the clarity he has achieved in the Granite State to the Palmetto State. “More tests,” as he put it. “Keeping your feet on the ground. Moving slowly.”

Robert Draper is a contributing writer for the magazine. His book about race and murder in Washington will be published in 2016.

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